Politicians Of All Stripes Tap The Well Of Religion

WASHINGTON — In their public rhetoric and private campaign discussions, presidential candidates in both parties agree on at least one fundamental issue: They want God on their side.

Across the political spectrum, candidates are openly invoking their faith. They are calling for partnerships between religious organizations and the federal government to address social problems and cultural decay, tracking a substantial shift in American attitudes about the mixture of religion and politics.

"Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of God," said Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

In part, the embrace of "faith-based" partnerships is a product of a Baby Boomer generation that has become more apparently religious and less resistant to the notion of cooperation with a church.

Political progressives on the left also have come to welcome church-based support, looking more at whether a program works than at who is sponsoring it. For Democrats in particular, it is also an overt sign that they will not cede morality and values to Republicans in the 2000 campaign.

In a speech last week in Atlanta, Vice President Al Gore made his clearest call for an increase in cooperation between government and religious organizations. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who is leading all Republicans--and Gore--in national polls, long has spoken of the benefits of such cooperation, as have all the other GOP hopefuls.

The mix of politics and religion long has been combustible. In 1960, many voters were concerned about whether the Vatican would guide John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic. President Jimmy Carter spoke of being a born-again Christian, a term that did not have broad reach in this country at the time. Evangelicals gravitated to the Republican Party in overwhelming numbers in the 1980s and came to expect candidates to address religious concerns. Fears of a Religious Right wielding too much influence, however, have proved to be a negative for the Republican Party.

Though church-centered groups have used government funding for years to carry out programs, candidates now are talking about the church-state division in ways that would have been roundly rejected a generation ago.

"For too long, national leaders have been trapped in a dead-end debate," Gore said in his speech. "Some on the right have said for too long that a specific set of religious values should be imposed, threatening the founders' precious separation of church and state. In contrast, some on the left have said for too long that religious values should play no role in addressing public needs. These are false choices . . . freedom of religion need not mean freedom from religion."

Gore advocated increased use of partnerships between the government and faith-based organizations, a theme that has echoed strongly with numerous Republican candidates.

"I give you this pledge: If you elect me president, the voices of faith-based organizations will be integral to the policies set forth in my administration," Gore said.

Places such as the Salvation Army, Christ House and Christian Women's Job Corps have some of the most effective programs dealing with addiction, mental illness and domestic violence, Gore said.

"To the workers in these organizations, that client is not a number but a child of God," he said. "We should explore carefully tailored partnerships with our faith community, so we can use the approaches that are working best."

A former divinity student, Gore has been talking on some level about such issues for at least a decade, but his remarks represented his most direct discussion of the church-state issue as a presidential candidate.

"There's an immediate political tactic issue here," Silk said. "I think it has really been undercovered. George W. Bush, to the extent that he has emphasized any discernible position, it has been this stuff (support for faith-based partnerships). There has been a big emphasis. One way to read the Gore statement is a little bit of covering of a flank, getting out in front on this issue before the Bush position has really surfaced in the national media."

Silk's research has documented the shift in liberal orthodoxy toward a greater acceptance of cooperation. "You've (now) got on the progressive end the exploring of religion in the context of social welfare policy as a positive," he said. "If you do it in an ecumenical way, faith-based common values, you can invoke God, then that's going to work."

For a country founded on an ideal of religious freedom, bipartisan support for a greater role between government and religious institutions has inspired criticism from liberal groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State and People for the American Way.